Throughout its long and colourful history, scientific activity has been tied to the interests of wealthy and powerful benefactors, whether Galileo at the court of the Medicis or the US government-funded Manhattan Project. In some ways, it seems pointless to ask whether science will always be tied to nations’ interests – let’s be honest, there are only so many sources of funding, and one of the defining features of modern scientific research is the perennial struggle to justify particular projects’ funding.

At the same time, science has become increasingly commercialised. Whereas before 1900 scientific companies simply did not exist, industrialisation drove forward new chemical companies and then world war created new weapons research firms. One only has to look at the amount of money companies like GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca are making to see that science increasingly serves commercial aims, rather than those of nations.

However, it is also true that these organisations are facing more scrutiny than ever before, with their activities subject to frequent examination. Government-funded programmes in particular have to justify their purpose against ‘public good’ criteria, whether in the short or long term. It is these sort of trickle-down benefits which, I think, mean that we should not be too worried about whose interests’ science is serving.

The oft-cited example of this manifesting itself is the space race: the sheer number of new technologies developed is extraordinary, all as the result of science being used to drive national pride and demonstrate superiority over the Cold War enemy. While some of these technologies may not have been particularly useful (the Americans spent millions developing a pen that could write upside down; the Soviets used a pencil), others (materials that work at high pressures and temperatures) certainly were.

In short, of course science serves various interests, particularly those of national governments, and this to my mind is a reasonable situation. Scientific research requires funding and its benefits tend to trickle down sooner rather than later – and, perhaps most importantly, the money has to come from somewhere.